


Sometimes When You're Lost, You're Found

by jazzypizzaz



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: (in an abstract sense though perhaps not literally), (the latter), Alice in Wonderland References, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, a spiraling slide through the strands of the shroomiverse, philosophical mumbo jumbo, probably reads like I either do too many drugs or not enough...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 19:28:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13060611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzypizzaz/pseuds/jazzypizzaz
Summary: The creature doesn’t really think of Itself as Itself; like the universe, It simply is.  The creature doesn’t have a name, until one day It does.Michael Burnham knows where she belongs and where she's going, but then everything is stripped away.  Michael Burnham knows who she is, until one day she doesn’t.Sometimes down is up, sometimes up is down.





	Sometimes When You're Lost, You're Found

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cassyblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassyblue/gifts).



> Quotes in italics are from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. Inspired by [this delightful art](http://jazzypizzaz.tumblr.com/post/168357405235/starfleetdoesntfirefirst-startrekscribbles) and based on a prompt by cassyblue for [Star Trek Secret Santa](http://startreksecretsanta.tumblr.com/).

**I.**

 

_“All right,” said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone._

 

\---

 

The creature doesn’t have a name for Itself; It simply _is_.  

 

After all, the universe doesn’t have a name either.  The empty space between galaxies don’t have names.  The individual strands of the mycelial network don’t have names.

 

Where does one fungal “root” end and another begin?  Is each spore within it a disparate organism, or one piece that exists as part of the whole?  If this fungus wraps around every point in existence, if there is nowhere that it _isn’t_ , can it be said to exist anywhere in particular?

 

It takes every choice -- every branching road, every convolution of the multiverse -- to form the whole of existence.

 

And if every individual cog in the clockwork of all is important and meaningful, are any of them?

 

The creature doesn’t really think of Itself as Itself.  

 

It is a traveller on the network, one of many cultivating the mycelial ecosystem, and within It are smaller organisms, in turn each performing their functions.  It is one part of a system, and It as well is comprised of smaller systems.  So is everything.

 

The creature traverses the spore highway, through the myriad variations of the universe, exploring all of existence.  

 

Adrift.  Timeless.  Free.

 

Alone.

 

The creature doesn’t have a name.  Until, one day, it does.

 

\---

 

Commander Michael Burnham knows who she is.  

 

First human to attend the Vulcan Learning Center.  Graduate of the Vulcan Science Academy.  Recipient of the Vulcan Scientific Legion of Honor.  Xenoanthropologist with studies in quantum physics.  First officer of the starship Shenzhou for Federation Starfleet.  

 

Michael Burnham knows who she is and where she belongs, because it’s the place she has by force of will carved out for herself.  She’s the skills she’s built, the reputation she’s cultivated, the focus and drive she brings to every mission.  

 

She is the culmination of every careful choice and personal sacrifice she’s made to get her to this point.  Michael Burnham has a place and a purpose.  

 

She knows who she is.

 

Until one fateful day when everything she once thought integral to she was as a person is ripped from her.  

 

Rank.  Destiny.  Function.  Esteem.  Ambition.

 

One by one, they fade away, until she’s left with nothing but a name.

 

A curse.

 

“Michael Burnham” no longer means the person she thought she was.  Instead, in the mouths of her victims, it’s anathema.  The one who started a war; the one who killed her captain; the one who betrayed us all.

 

Michael Burnham, the mutineer.

 

The rest of her no longer seems to exist, if it ever did.

 

\---

 

_Wasn’t that a curious thing, a Grin without any Cat?_

 

_\---_

 

**II.**

 

_The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect._

 

\---

 

The creature does what It evolved to do.

 

Hungry and cold, It can survive as such until the end of time, but this discomfort It does not prefer.  So when it finds a concentrated cache of fungus It can’t help but burrow in with joy.

 

The creature is a connoisseur of spores, and these ones are vibrant in life, fragrant and delicious.  They are, however, out of place from the great network, transplanted, and so they embrace the creature as a steward into their system.  

 

Perhaps the creature can restore balance.  That is Its role, as traveller.

 

The cultivators of the fungus, however -- the crew of the starship as they call themselves -- are not so welcoming.

 

They rip the creature from its home. Imprison It, torture It.  

 

These captors emit a cosmic energy like all acting pieces of the universe do, a projection of their purpose and drive, and this energy is the language the creature knows.  

 

The captors are not by nature malevolent, the creature knows this.  Curious, clumsy, ignorant, but not malevolent.  

 

They do wish to harm the creature, but only because they do not know better.

 

A consummate survivor, the creature will not die.  Not from their electric shocks or brain probes, nor their attempts to upend the balance of the universe by forcing It to whip through the mycelial network according to their whim.

 

That doesn’t mean the creature likes this.

 

The creature does not wish to harm them, but this is the only way to be free, so It must.

 

It escapes, only to be captured again for much the same.

 

The creature does what It evolved to do, but, lucky for It, so does the xenoanthropologist.

 

\---

 

_“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”_

_“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice._

_“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”_

 

\---

 

Michael Burnham is the sum of her choices, and each choice is a forked road of possibility.

 

(Action or patience?  Acceptance or anger?  Diplomacy or war?)

 

But once a road is taken, there’s no retreat.  Only forwards.  

 

And if the blueprint of her life exists along a mycelial network of its own, then the roads of destiny that once branched towards unlimited opportunity have now been severed into dead-ends.

 

(When there is nowhere left except void, where else can she go?)

 

Michael Burnham takes the fortune cookie and eats it.

 

(Lifeline or trap?)

 

The universe hates waste, and she does like to be useful.  

 

What Michael later discovers, is that while the strands of her future may have unravelled, no all of them are gone.  

 

Stripped of rank, stripped of her future, stripped of her mentor --only when she has been whittled down to her very core can she discover what’s left.  

 

(Monster or misunderstood?)

 

What can not be taken from her: Michael Burnham is, foremost, a xenoanthropologist.  An explorer  An interpreter.  Curious and compassionate and full of wonder at the diversity of life.

 

Only through discovering the true nature of the creature, does she discover her own.

 

Michael Burnham is a survivor; she cannot be destroyed.

 

She is not in the place she thought she belonged. (She is no longer free).  Perhaps, however perhaps, she’s in the place the universe needs her to be.

 

Michael names the lost creature as friend, and through the naming of a thing she gives life beyond the pathways laid out for It.

 

She gives It a name, and with that she sets it free.

 

Michael Burnham sets herself free.

 

\---

 

**III.**

  


_“I don’t like the look of it at all,” said the King: “however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.”_

_“I’d rather not,” the Cat remarked._

_“Don’t be impertinent,” said the King, “and don’t look at me like that!” He got behind Alice as he spoke._

_“A cat may look at a king,” said Alice._

 

\---

 

Free to roam once more, the creature coasts through the distant ends of everywhere.  The mycelial roots wrap around every point in existence, all that was and all that will be.  They connect through all of time and space, in a great web of all that _could_ be.

 

And the creature can travel through it all.

 

Drifting along, the strands tug and fray.  The creature stops.

 

A familiar scent.  The curious one - the intense one - the Namer.

 

Familiar, but out of place.

 

Her smell is wrong for this strand.  Displaced from the correct variation of existence, and her ship too.

 

The creature’s small role in the mechanics of the universe is to cultivate the fungal pathways.  It prunes and places, harvests and nurtures.  It knows when something is not where it belongs.

 

(It’s the strange one’s fault, the one who can see the paths.  The one who is unlike the creature and yet not.)

 

When the curious one met the creature, she had radiated feelings of lost, but she had been where she was supposed to be.  Now, though she feels found, she is in fact, along with her ship, lost.

 

The creature knows where she was, where she is, and where she will be.  Except that none of those are where she is now.

 

(The strange one brought them here; he’s the one who jumped the paths unnaturally.)

 

And yet the strands of connection wrap around her thicker than ever.  To her crew.  To whole civilizations.  To future alliances.  To her lover and his fate.  To a planet of isolated beings of light.  To a lone gormagander’s last breaths.

 

And one of those strands connects to the creature itself.

 

She had given the creature Its name, and with that in some small way entwined herself with It.

 

(But no.  It was not the strange one who brought them here, but the Other.  The mad king who pulls on the strings of them all.)

 

There’s a difference between where the creature is intended to be, as one small piece in the greater workings of the universe, and where it _chooses_ to go.

 

(The mad king is acting within his purpose.  But the creature can see further down the lines of time.  He knows how the mad king twists the fate of the others.  The creature can see where the paths converge, and it knows what lies at the end of this road.  The Namer won’t like it.  Neither will the strange one.)

 

The creature chooses to thwart the universe’s plans.

 

The creature is part of a larger whole, and It contains multitudes within Itself.  But It’s also now connected laterally, in a web of personal relationships to those who act on Its level.

 

Ripper has always been a steward within the network, but now It knows It can make Its own decisions.  

 

It chooses to rip loose unnatural threads.  It chooses to help she who named him.

 

(Time to cut the strings from the mad king.)

 

\---

 

_“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”_

_“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat._

_“I don’t much care where—” said Alice._

_“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat._

 

\---

 

Michael Burnham is an avenger.  

 

She kills her captain’s murderer, she ends the war she helped start, she earns her place on the crew.  

 

Michael Burnham is both a fighter and a survivor.

 

She discovers that stripped of rank and expectation, even displaced from her own dimension in a mirror verse, Michael Burnham is at the core someone brave and kind, unflinching in the face of terror and accepting of those who were broken.  

 

Michael Burnham is a protector.

 

The events of the past few months don’t feel like they were supposed to happen, but happen they did.  She does not pretend to know what will happen next, whether she will return to incarceration or be offered new opportunities, but now is the time to rest.  

 

On the tongues of others, “Michael Burnham” is still the mutineer, the pariah.  

 

But Michael herself now knows that that is not all she is.  

 

She is the product of her past decisions and the captain of her future destiny.  But at the heart of her, are those intrinsic unshakeable qualities that no one can rip away.  Not even herself.

 

She knows now it’s not about following along the narrow path thrust upon her by others.  Of proving that she’s worthy to all those who believe she’s nothing.

 

It’s about forging her own pathways.  About the right decisions at the right time, about facing each moment with the wonder and love and curiosity that life has given her.  

 

It’s about connecting to the richness of life around her, weaving a vast web of relationships that transcend time and ripple with consequences long past the short lives of the mortals involved.

 

With the help of the tardigrade, Michael Burnham goes where no one has gone before:  

 

On a journey to discover the universe, and each of our small places within it.

 

\---

 

_“—so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation._

_“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”_

**Author's Note:**

> I love comments. :) thanks for reading!


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